Bruce Ely / The Oregonian Gilbert Park Elementary teacher Jessika Evers guides kindergartner Delila Ortiz Ponce through a timed exercise testing on letters and letter sounds. By the end of the year, Evers expects her students to read simple storybooks on their own and to write a short research paper. With that much ground to cover, she values knowing what her pupils already know -- and where she needs to customize her teaching -- at the start of the school year.Five-year-old Lolo DeLeon didn't hang back on his first day of kindergarten at Gilbert Park Elementary in Southeast Portland.

After watching his teacher summon a few other students one by one to answer a series of questions, Lolo stepped forward and asked to go next.

His teacher, Lindsay DeFazio, pointed to a capital M and asked the boy to name the letter. He did. Same with T.

But C wasn't as easy.

"Kuh," Lolo said.

"That's the sound," DeFazio said. "Do you know the name?"

"Cat?" Lolo asked.

She smiled warmly and ran him through many more letters and sounds, more than half of which he nailed.

Bruce Ely / The Oregonian Lolo DeLeon presses his brow as he works to answer teacher Lindsay DeFazio's questions about letters on his first day of kindergarten. Kindergartners at Gilbert Park Elementary in the David Douglas school district attend only one day of class during the first four days of school. With only one-fourth of their students present each day, teachers have time to assess each child's skills one-on-one.How did he know so much on his first day in school?

"My mom," he said.

Students who start kindergarten equipped with certain skills and knowledge are far more likely to be strong readers in grade three and beyond. Key traits include basic counting skills, the ability to follow directions and take turns, and familiarity with letter sounds and simple words.

But Oregon has never had a reliable picture of how many 5-year-olds arrive primed to learn and how far behind the others are.

That will change next fall, when every entering kindergartner will be screened on letter names and sounds, basic counting and addition, and behaviors that lead to school success, such as paying attention and trying hard.

More states are assessing kindergarten readiness than just a few years ago, she said, and many are looking beyond reading readiness to measure students' social development, approach to learning and concentration skills.

"We really have increased our understanding that social-emotional skills are just as important if not more important" than early reading skills at helping students become academically strong in later grades, she said.

Bruce Ely / The Oregonian Teachers at 16 Oregon schools are piloting a three-pronged approach to measuring every kindergartner's readiness for school before it rolls out to every Oregon kindergarten next year. One task asks students to say what sound a letter makes when the teacher points to it. Those with the most knowledge are asked to produce 100 kuhs, tuhs, esses and wuhs in one minute. The team landed on a trio of choices: four timed tests of reading skills from the easyCBM series developed at UO; one math-skill test from easyCBM; and a research-proven 17-question checklist on student behavior.

The checklist is free and, this year, the tests are, too, though easyCBM was bought by Riverside Publishing, the testing arm of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Next year, the tests will cost $1 per child or less thanks to the UO connection.

Oregon teachers are giving kindergartners the tests during one-on-one sessions during the opening weeks of school. They're waiting several weeks before filling out the checklist to rate how frequently each child does things such as "observe rules and follow directions without requiring repeated reminders" and "return to unfinished tasks after interruption."

"We're going to find the cut scores that tend to be predictive of a group of students who will have problems later on," Tindal said. "The trick will be not just to identify them, but to remediate them, because if you don't pick up the skills for early reading early on, it's so tragic."

She is particularly excited that Oregon schools will be using the behavior checklist because new research, including studies she has led, show that so-called "executive function skills" -- focusing, paying attention, following multi-step directions, delaying gratification and suppressing some urges -- are extremely important to school success.

Some studies indicate that how well children perform those skills at age 5 or 6 is a better predictor than early reading or math skills of which students will be strong readers by grade three -- and even which students will graduate from college.

Research is showing those skills can be taught, she said. Students learn to focus and follow directions not by being lectured to, but through games and activities that allow them to practice focusing and following complex directions.

Card games, Simon Says and an opposite version of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes all have been shown to help and are very doable for preschool and kindergarten teachers, she said.

Once Oregon kindergartens systematically screen for those skills, they are more likely to press their own teachers -- and parents and preschool teachers -- to instill them, she said.

"Can you stop and think about something before you do it when you are 4? There is a lot of evidence that if you can, you will do better in school. There are fun, engaging ways to help our kids exercise those skills and practice them, like strengthening a muscle in their brain."